Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Hall effect sensor.
Description of the Background Art
Vertical Hall effect sensors are known from EP 9 540 85 A1, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,068, and DE 101 50 955 C1, in which multiple electrically conductive regions extend into a substrate to form multiple Hall effect elements perpendicular to the surface of the substrate, and multiple contact regions have a side surface at the surface of the substrate. In addition, arrangements of Hall effect sensors are known from EP 2 000 813 A1, which corresponds to U.S. Pat. No. 8,324,891, and US 2011/0101975 A1 for the purpose of determining the components of a magnetic field in a plane or the magnitude and direction in the plane.
Hall effect sensors are used in many technical fields, in particular to sense the position of switches or actuators in a contactless and wear-free manner. Many advantages are offered by the use and spatial sensing of magnetic fields as compared to optical or mechanical sensing, since the technologies based on magnetic fields are, in particular, considerably less sensitive to contamination.
A Hall effect sensor device is known from DE 10 2011 107 767 A1 that has four Hall effect elements connected in series, which are especially suitable for reducing the effects of offset voltages via the spinning current method. The spinning current method is known in connection with lateral Hall effect sensors for suppressing the offset of the sensor signal from the book “Rotary Switch and Current Monitor by Hall-Based Microsystems” by Ralph Steiner Vanha, published by Physical Electronics Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, 1999, pages 39-53. The spinning current method consists of cyclically rotating the measurement and current direction at the Hall effect sensor by 90°, for example, on a continuous basis at a specific clock frequency and summing over all measurement signals of a full rotation through 360°, thereby reducing the effect of offset voltages.